Right side of the Brain

"You have two brains: a left and a right. Your left brain is your verbal and rational brain; it thinks serially and reduces its thoughts to numbers, letters, and words.........
Your right brain is your non-verbal and intuitive brain; it thinks in patterns, or pictures, composed of 'whole things,' and does not comprehend reductions, either numbers, letters, or words."

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Monday, August 28, 2006

Friday, August 25, 2006

Raoul Duke...."We had two bags of grass, seventy- five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi- colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can".

Dr. Johnson...."He who makes a beast of himself Gets rid of the pain of being a man".

Raoul Duke...."There's a big.. machine in the sky... some kind of electric snake.. coming straight at us".

Dr. Gonzo...."Shoot it".

Raoul Duke...."Not yet, I want to study it's habits".

Raoul Duke...."Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel... total loss of all basic motor skills; blurred vision, no balance, numb tongueThe mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting, because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it".

Raoul Duke...."Look over there. Two women fucking a Polar Bear".

Dr. Gonzo...."Please, don't tell me those things... Not now".

Raoul Duke...."Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a Highway Traffic Cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow. But he won't know what to make of your blinker signal that says you're about to turn right. This is to let him know you're looking for a proper place to pull off and talk. It will take him a moment to realize that he is about to make 180 degree turn at speed... but you will be ready for it, braced for the G's and the fast heel toe work".

Sven...."Listen, you fuzzy little shithead -- I've been fucked around, in my time, by a fairly good cross- section of mean-tempered rule-crazy cops.. and now, it's MY turn. So fuck you officer, I'm in charge".

Raoul Duke...."There he goes -- one of God's own prototypes -- a high powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live... and too rare to die".

Raoul Duke...." We had abused every rule that Vegas lived by -- burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help.The only chance now, I felt, was the possibility that we'd gone to such excess that nobody in the position to bring the hammer down on us could possibility believe it".

Calvin: Hold it. This story doesn't have any shoot-ups in it, does it?

Dad: You mean guns? No.

Calvin: Any violence at all?

Dad: Um... not really.

Calvin: Any reference to satanism? Any profanity? Any car chases? Any lewd parts?

Dad: Of course not!

Calvin: What makes you think I'll like this?

Dad: Once upon a time, there was a...

Calvin: Hold it. You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see the three bears eat the three little pigs, and then the bears join up with the big bad wolf and eat Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood! Tell me a story like that, OK?

Cobain received his first guitar from his uncle at age 15, who had bought it at bargain price from Rosevear's Music Center in Aberdeen, choosing it over a bicycle. From there, he tried to form bands with friends, generally noodling on songs by AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. In high school, he often found himself without anyone to jam with, as none of his friends had any particular musical talent. Later in high school, Cobain met Novoselic, a fellow devotee of punk rock, who lived across from the Young Street bridge. Novoselic's mother owned a hair salon (Maria's Hair Design) and they would practice there in the above room on occasion. A few years later, Cobain tried to convince Novoselic to form a band with him by lending him a copy of a home demo recorded by Cobain's earlier band, Fecal Matter. After months of prodding, Novoselic finally agreed to join Cobain, forming the beginnings of Nirvana.For the first few years of their playing together, Novoselic and Cobain found themselves host to a rotating list of drummers. Eventually, the band settled on Chad Channing, with whom Nirvana recorded the album Bleach, released on Sub Pop Records in 1989. Cobain, however, became dissatisfied with Channing's style, eventually leading the band to Dave Grohl. With Grohl, the band found their greatest success via their 1991 major-label debut, Nevermind.Cobain struggled to reconcile the massive success of Nirvana with his underground roots. He also felt persecuted by the media, comparing himself to Frances Farmer, and harbored resentment for people who claimed to be fans of the band but who completely missed the point of the band's message. One incident particularly distressing to Cobain involved two men who raped a woman while singing the Nirvana song "Polly". Cobain condemned the episode in the liner notes of the US release of the album Incesticide: "Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song 'Polly.' I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience. Sorry to be so anallyP.C. but that's the way I feel."

Cobain's final weeksFollowing a tour stop at Terminal Eins in Munich, Germany, on March 1, 1994, Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis. He flew to Rome the next day for medical treatment, and was joined there by his wife on March 3.The next morning, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol. (Love had a prescription for Rohypnol filled after arriving in Rome.) Cobain was immediately rushed to the hospital, and spent the rest of the day unconscious. After five days in the hospital, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle. [9] Love later insisted publicly that the incident was Cobain's first suicide attempt.On March 18, Love phoned police to inform them that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police arrived and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to hide from Love. When questioned by police, Love admitted that Cobain had never mentioned that he was suicidal and that she had not seen him with a gun. [10]On March 25, Love arranged an intervention concerning Cobain's drug use. The ten people involved included musician friends, record company executives, and one of Cobain's closest friends, Dylan Carlson. Former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg described Cobain as being "extremely reluctant" and that he "denied that he was doing anything self-destructive." However, by the end of the day, Cobain had agreed to undergo a detox program. [11]On March 30, Cobain arrived at the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles, California. On the afternoon of April 1, one of Frances Bean's nannies brought her to the facility for an hour-long visit with Cobain. That night, Cobain walked outside to have a cigarette, then climbed over a six-foot-high fence to leave the facility. He took a taxi to the airport and flew back to Seattle. The next morning, he stopped by his Seattle home and had a conversation with Michael "Cali" DeWitt, who lived at Cobain's house. Over the next several days, Cobain was spotted in various locations around Seattle, but most of his friends and family were unaware of his whereabouts.On April 3, Love contacted a private investigator, Tom Grant, and hired him to find Cobain. The next day, Love filed a missing person report under Cobain's mother's name without her permission. She added in the file that Cobain was suicidal and was in possession of a shotgun. [12]

On April 8, 1994, Cobain's body was discovered in the spare room above the garage (referred to as "the greenhouse") at his Lake Washington home by Veca Electric employee Gary Smith. Smith arrived at the house that morning to install security lighting and saw the body lying inside. Apart from a minor amount of blood coming out of Cobain's ear, Smith reported seeing no visible signs of trauma, and initially believed that Cobain was asleep. Smith found what he thought might be a suicide note with a pen stuck through it beneath an overturned flowerpot. A shotgun, purchased for Cobain by Dylan Carlson, was found at Cobain's side. An autopsy report later concluded Cobain's death was a result of a "self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head." The report estimates Cobain to have died on April 5, 1994.In the alleged suicide note, ostensibly written to Cobain's imaginary childhood friend "Boddah", Cobain quoted a lyric from Neil Young's song "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)": "It's better to burn out than to fade away." Cobain's use of the lyric had a profound impact on Young, who recorded portions of his 1994 album Sleeps with Angels in Cobain's memory. The note also evoked the name of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, who Cobain felt could revel in the adoration of an audience in a way that Cobain himself could not.Cobain's body was cremated, with one third of his ashes scattered at the Namgyaltibetan buddhist monastery in Ithaca, New York, another third in the Wishkah River, and the rest left in Love's possession.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Thursday, July 20, 2006

When drawing a face, any face, it is as if curtain after curtain, mask after mask, falls away.... until a final mask remains, one that can be no longer be removed, reduced. By the time the drawing is finished, i know a great deal about that face, because no face can hide itself for long. But although nothing escapes the eye all is foregiven beforehand. The eye does not judge, moralize, criticize. It accepts the mask in gratitude as it does the long bamboos being long.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Human faces have always fascinated me, like most artists. To catch a likeness, to show the exterior in such a way that the inner person can be seen, is a challenging, inviting prospect. Moreover, a portrait can reveal not only the appearence and personality of the person but also the soul of the artist.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Do you know that a man has only one eye which sees and registers everything; this eye, like a superb camera which takes minute pictures, very sharp, tiny-and with that picture man tells himself: 'this time I know the reality of things,' and he is calm for a moment. Then, slowly superimposing itself on the picture, another eye makes its appearance, invisibly, which makes an entirely different picture for him.

"Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see-to see correctly-and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye."